Outlook emails chopped short and sent date and recipient blank

Hi
I am using Outlook 2007 and i keep about 2 years of all sent emails in the Sent emails folder.

The automatic archive for this folder are set so that any emails older than 2 years, are moved to the archive folder.

A number of months ago (been too busy to tackle this until now and can't remember if it started before i moved to Windows 7 or after) i noticed that many emails in my Sent folder have blank headers. By that i mean the following are blank Sent: Date and the To: Recipient's name

These emails appear to be all older than 4 months... but i am only guessing this based on looking at the content of the email and trying to remember when i sent them.

When i click on the email the content looks ok for the first few lines... and then the rest of the content seems to be chopped.

I have only seen this in the Sent folder, although i have many other large folders.


Many emails in my Sent folder appear fine and look normal.


Does anybody have an idea what the problem could be, or how it was caused, or how it could be fixed?

I have done many things over the past year including
· Moving from XP to Windows 7
· Searching for all emails greater than 3 Mb and deleting them
· After deleting the large emails, i resized the pst files so they became smaller

I have also seen a possibly unrelated problem whereby the Auto Archive fails with an error unable to open the Archive Pst file. I believe this has been happening since i switched to Windows 7 in June this year.
[FONT=&quot]Error while archiving folder "Deleted Items" in store "Personal Folders". The file C:\Documents and Settings\Dave\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\archive.pst cannot be opened.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Error while archiving folder "Sent Items" in store "Personal Folders". The file C:\Documents and Settings\Dave\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\archive.pst cannot be opened.[/FONT]
Best Wishes,
Dave

Try the OL Repair tools that come with Outlook.
Inbox Repair Tool or the OST Repair tool

Thanks for the quick reply SlartyBart.

I ran the Inbox repair tool and it found and fixed errors.

However the missing headers and chopped short emails are still there in the Sent folder.

I got a message to say offline synchronisation is not supported for my mailbox.

Has anybody ever seen emails chopped short like this before? And the header info also missing?

Best Wishes, Dave

Please explain "When I moved to Windows 7..." A new machine or an in place upgrade. I understand that you went from XP to Win7.

It sounds as though your .PST(s) are FUBAR. Inbox repair should have been able to correct that.

How's your disk space?
You might try creating a new .PST and move everything out of your current .PST. It's been a long time since I've used Outlook, but I did just that to keep from overloading my standard eMail processing.

Let me look around for OL archive repair / recovery. If i recall, this will also entail creating a new .PST

Bill
.

Hi Bill,
My PC is about 3 years old with plenty of disk space. I used to have XP on it, and June 2012 i formatted the C drive which had the operating system, but kept all my data files on the D and E drives.

I installed Windows 7 Professional 64 bit from scratch.

Bill or anybody else....

i can't see how rebuilding the PST file would help with emails which are cut short with header info missing.

Has anybody ever seen this problem of emails being chopped?

Is this the correct Forum to get Microsoft Support reading the posts to offer solutions ? ..... or has that day and age gone ;-)

Best Wishes,
Dave

DaveBrock said:

Is this the correct Forum to get Microsoft Support reading the posts to offer solutions ? ..... or has that day and age gone ;-)

Click to expand...

Hello Dave,

I'm just a member on Seven Forums - not an owner, administrator, moderator, spokesperson, etc.
These are my comments and understanding ... and do not in any way reflect the opinion of Windows Seven Forums.

Windows Seven Forums (SF) is not a Microsoft website.
It is an independent site where most of the members are volunteers trying to help anyone with Windows 7 problems.
You should see this if you scroll to the bottom of the SF Page.



Seven Forums does have a "Microsoft Community Contributor Award"
Read more at http://www.sevenforums.com/general-...ms-microsoft-community-contributor-award.html

Microsoft has it's own support sites where questions are answered, and can be asked.

You may find answers and solutions on Seven Forums for your problem.
You might also want to search Microsoft sites or ANY other websites for answers.

I've found Seven Forums to be the best site for help and answers that i look for.
I also find Microsoft and other websites have many articles, how-to's, etc. on their sites that can help resolve issues.

Hope this helps,
David

You mentioned that the eMail itself has all of the header info in it, but the body of the msg is incomplete, is that correct or did I read something incorrectly.

If the .PST is confused, it might only present as much of the object as it "knows" about. As I mentioned, it's been quite a while for me on Outlook. If you want to test the integrity of the msg itself, try exporting your eMail. I forget if you can do one at a time or it's a wholesale export. It would expect it to operate on a single item. Note that I'm not suggesting that you export all of your mail, just one of the problem eMails. Does it have everything you expect? Header and body?

Rebuilding the PST corrects this confusion.
Your two statements kind of put this into perspective "June 2012 installed Win7" and "a number of months ago....." and "older than 4 months ago....".
If Outlook depends on registry keys for indexing then these keys didn't come over when you installed Win7.

The easiest thing would be too install Outlook on Win7 and point the message store to your existing .PST (or a copy of it). That would answer the question of the registry. It might not solve a corrupt .PST - that's why I suggested creating a new .PST store.

Either way should work.
I'm not sure that the two issues are unrelated.

Hi Bill,
The header info (recipient's name and date sent) is completely missing. The email itself does not have the header info.

The body of the email is also chopped short.

Outlook 2007 does not have the facilty to export 1 single email. It can export a single folder.

I did install Outlook 2007 on Windows 7 after i installed Windows 7 cleanly from scratch.

Then i pointed Outlook 2007 to the pst files which contain all the emails...headers.. body etc.

My two statements are more a reflection of my hazy memory after a very busy year. It could have been 10 months ago that i first noticed some emails in my sent folder having missing header info and being chopped, but i was too busy to deal with it, and only came back to look at it last week.

I have no idea when i first noticed the chopped emails.

But if you think re-building the pst may help restore the missing info i will give it a go.

I am surprised that nobody has answered about ever seeing emails being chopped short like this before in Outlook?

Best Wishes,
Dave

Thanks for the clarification Brock.

Every user, configuration and operation is different. I'm sure this is not a new phenomenon, but only rears it's head under certain conditions. It's possible that other users found the answer on the Outlook forum on Ms or some other user forum. I do a quick search and post anything found.

Could you export the sent folder? Are eMails intact (header, body). I'd expect them to be whole and this is simply a manifestation of Outlook .PST confusion. It's possible that the .PST won't be able to export the items in entirety because of the issue you're facing. but please go ahead and try exporting the Sent folder.

Thanks,
Bill
.

First, is your Outlook 2007 SP2?
No? Bring it up to date using the link above.

Second, found a MS tool that might help.
Microsoft Outlook Configuration Analyzer Tool 2.0

Third, To fix the specific errors posted in #1
Navigate to
C:\Documents and Settings\Dave\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\
and rename archive.pst archive0.pst
create a new folder BrockStore (or any name)

NOTE: creating a new folder might not be necessary, you might be able to tell Outlook to use the same location as before, but since I'm not sure - create the new folder.

If Outlook doesn't automatically create a new archive, use the wizard
Outlook->File menu->archive
point to the new folder you created above.

NOTE: This reference was to previous versions of OL, the archive wizard might be in a different menu in OL 2007


Please update your specs here on SF - use the Easy specs link in my sig so you don't have to type all of the info. manually add the OL info in the other section

Thanks
Bill
.

Hi Bill,
Just to let you know i am working this weekend so may be off the radar until Monday. I will try the export and the renaming the archive when i get time.

Thanks for these suggestions!

Best Wishes,
Dave

Ok Dave,

Work on the issue when you have time. I'm subscribed to this thread, so I'll see when new posts are written.

Hi Bill,
I exported the Sent folder, and copied it to a laptop running XP. The emails are still chopped short.

I then searched my PC for backups of Outlook.pst and found one from November 2011 which has no chopped emails... so at least i know the problem began since then.

I found another backup outlook.pst dated May 2012 1 month BEFORE i installed Windows 7, and there are chopped emails in the sent folder.

I also think that somehow this problem is active and on-going, in that i believe that emails that i was able to find 1 month ago in my Sent folder have since been chopped.

I can't find these emails now.... as when i search for the senders name... no email found.

I am beginning to wonder if this problem is somehow being caused by the 'archive' facility which may be 'cutting' emails first... and then unable to copy into the archive folder.... and also not being able to restore the original 'cut'. Just a wild guess and i can already see flaws in this hypotheses... as in why would part of the email still be left in the Sent folder with the header missing and body of the email chopped.

Do you have any advice how to get advice from Microsoft on this? Is there a Microsoft Outlook forum ?

Best Wishes,
Dave

Good investigation. So the problem began between Nov 2011 and May 2012.

I think you're on the right track re: the archive PST and the error. OL might think the archive completes and writes to the sent folder bad data - guessing, but your logic seems good. I stopped trying to figure out why of things a long time ago, I just want to fix the problem and go back to normal.

If the problem is a corrupt store or related to size/number of entries in the store, creating a new store solves that problem going forward. If there is some underlying issue with OL itself, a new store won't help.

At least you know it had nothing to do with moving to Win7.

MS Outlook forum

Best of luck,

Bill
.